The highest confinement parameters measured on the Tandem Mirror Experiment-Upgrade (TMX-U) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are summarized. The highest TMX-U global energy confinement product was 2 × 10l0 cm−3·s and the highest central cell electron temperature was 0.28 keV. Both were achieved during standard tandem mirror operation with a central cell density of 6 × 1012 cm−3. During thermal barrier operation, strong end plugging was limited to densities below 3 × 10l2 cm−3 and the maximum global energy confinement product was 0.6 × 10l0 cm−3·s. This performance is lower than that predicted by present theory but higher than that achieved in the earlier Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX).
Tandem mirror experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory